The secret world of HACKED calculators
When using a calculator, many aschool pupil has tapped in a few numbers, turned the device upside down and proudly shown off words such as “shell”. Maybe even something a little more risqué. For some students, however, that hasn’t been satisfying enough, prompting them to go further by hacking away at the technology and pushing it to its limits.
Although it may seem that calculators are rather constrained, for some models that couldn’t be further from the truth. In the 1990sand 2000s, many students took Texas Instruments ’ graphing calculators and created all kinds of wonderful software, ranging from a whole new operating system and a synthesiser to an emulator capable of playing Ninten do Game Boy titles.
Such endeavours got them into trouble – not with the teachers, you understand, but with the manufacturer itself. Yet, undeterred, a thriving community grew online, with calculator hackers aiming to impress one another by developing ever more advanced techniques that had previously not been thought possible.
The TIs that bind us
For those unaware (and that’s likely most in the UK), Texas Instruments produced a good number of calculator models, starting in 1990 with the TI-81 and progressing, counterintuitively, to the TI-85, TI-82, TI-80 and many others, including the popular TI-83 Plus and TI-84 Plus.
They were particularly well used in the US
